


guilty pleasure

by Kare



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Recovery, Violence, media usage, nerd, super soldiers being clueless about the 21th century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 05:51:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6643927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kare/pseuds/Kare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is such a strange phrase.<br/>Neither Steve nor Bucky really master the concept</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Steve doesn't understand the term guilty pleasure

**Author's Note:**

> It's camp Nano and I have the mother of all writing slumps... go figure.
> 
> This is likely the only thing I will have to show for this month... so I figured I might as well post it...

Steve doesn't understand the term guilty pleasure.

Yes, he had done a few things in his time that he probably shouldn't have enjoyed as much as he had. But they could have landed him in real trouble had he been found out.

These days, if people use the phrase, it refers to some food or TV show or maybe an online game. These people are not even endangering themselves or anyone else for that matter. And for a few weeks he just wants to believe - wants to believe that they have made it to the 21st century and the worst people have to worry about is the nutritional value of their desert.

Of course it isn't true.

War and famine and diseases are all still there.

And he knows people who agonize about whether or not to buy the next season of a TV show.

Another of these foreign but brilliant inventions. If you are willing to pay you can buy your own TV program by now, watch it when ever you feel like it, completely independent of the actual live TV program. He likes the idea. But as with many other things: he isn't too sure if he has an actual opinion on it.

And he reads what ever he can get his hands on.

And he learns about Hopper and his paintings and wonders if the comfort he draws from it is kinda the same.

Steve makes the conscious decision not to inquire.

And it is on one of these lonely train rides through the city, when the view from the windows has yet to lull him into stupor and the noises inside the compartment are too loud to ignore them completely... That is when the two boys, probably not even ten, start to compare stats with the same enthusiasm as those old soldiers who compared battle scars or medals. They are comparing things named after elements or traits, share where they got them or what has to be done to achieve them.

And they are holding things that seem like a modified version of those smart phones everyone is carrying around.

Steve finds that he can be incredible patient while listening into these conversations - as long as he does not try to understand them.

It is a bit like sitting in a cafe in a foreign country, when one is listening in on other people simply because one can.

So they are talking about some sort of game. And that should be that.

Except that there is another man, not even three meters away, clearly also listening in, a similar modified phone in hand.

Unlike the two boys this one actually feels when he is being watched. His eyes catch Steve watching him and he looks away with the careful neutral air of someone who has been caught but feigns ignorance.

And Steve just wants to take his shoulder and shake and scream some sense into him. Because Steve did not watch his life disintegrate during the war so people could be stupid about something so banal now. The guy is not even stealing anything, much less putting someone else in harms way.

Stop feeling guilty about not bothering people!

Somehow this irritation is the main reason why Steve tracks those devices down - wasn't even hard, they are called a Nintendo DS or 3DS - as well as the game - wasn't hard either - and goes about navigating stylized pixels through forests and grass lands and the like. And yes, he too racks up a pretty impressive _Pokemon_ collection. So, yes, maybe it is a child's toy - at the very least it was cheaper than the breakable phone people have gotten him - but it takes his mind of things for a bit.

And yes, boiling down actions to four options at best makes those games decidedly easier to navigate then real live.

It does not take too long till someone recs him _Final Fantasy_. It is perfect. These games are a bit harder, more tactical, longer. He even gets a sense as to why they were called 'epic' to his face more than once.

And if it turns out that it is ever so slightly easier to cry over a media orchestrated scenario then over his own fucked up live, no one needs to be the wiser.

And Steve loves replaying those games without any kind of urgency. He is still at it when Sam decides to join the search for Bucky a few months later.

And it is in the way that Sam eyes him when he first catches Steve at it.

And Steve knows he is spurting the same kind of expression he had once wanted to shake of a strangers face, because suddenly he is wondering if just maybe Sam has found him on something just a little bit too telling.

Instead Sam makes a quip about Japano RPGs. Two days later he tries to get Steve into something called _Plants vs. Zombies_. And another week later Steve is introduced to something called _Full Metal Alchemists_.

Steve probably should be ticked off about the later. It doesn't take a genius to understand what might have tempted Sam to pick out that one.

It is still better than worrying about the question just how much of that _Supernatural_ show wasn’t made up.

And Sam is a therapist. For all the things they argue about, Steve's personalized approach towards entertainment is never one of them.


	2. Bucky doesn't understand the term guilty pleasure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky doesn't really grasp the phrase either...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The compaignon piece.  
> I really couldn't resist.

Bucky doesn't understand the term guilty pleasure.

For a while he simply mistook the absence of pain as pleasure.

Steve tried to get it through to him that there is a bit more to it then that.

And let it never be said that Captain America is anything if not insistent.

Steve tried it with sweets. It was possibly the easiest option. Chocolate and candies and soda and marshmallows, sugar spun so fine it looked like cotton, pancakes and sweet rice and popcorn and the occasional sweet from their youth. Bucky knew for a fact that Steve would not have thought to get even one of these things for himself. But the more Bucky didn't latch onto those things the more Steve regained his own sweet tooth.

Which was fine.

Steve tried normal food next. Pretty much anything that could be sneaked near Bucky without actually having to interact with the otherwise rather elliptical man.

Next Steve tried everything soft he could get his hand on. The man who only could sleep in his own bed after having placed wooden boards under the mattress threw every pillow and blanket and comforter at Bucky he could find.

He even got that Pepper woman to help pick out hair care and skin care and beard care and all those other products people supposedly used these days.

And through Steve's quiet and insistent ways all of these things became fine.

Bucky probably would not have chosen even one of these things for himself. But if Steve, the one person who had always known right from wrong, placed them in front of Bucky, then the were safe and fine and such.

The truth is that Bucky only starts to really appreciate these things once his mind is healed enough to actively want things and his private life has fixed itself enough for him to be able to afford them on his own.

By then a whole lot of other things also carry Steve's stamp of approval. Enough to make day to day life remarkably easy to navigate.

Bucky even gets some of these new fangled gadgets everyone else is carrying around.

And after he found Steve playing video games every now and then Bucky is far from shy when he digs in and tries to figure out just what the Internet has to offer.

And he knows that compared to some of the shit he has done as a brain washed assassin, nothing he gets up to on the Internet is really worth confessing either.

Or maybe Bucky just finds that Steve is incredibly relaxed about a lot of things, considering that some people view the Captain as a fossil from the 40s. (Also, the things that Steve is relaxed about even include Sex, so what could Bucky possibly complain about?)

Things eventually do get better. James would not really have believed it only two years ago, but eventually it happens. He gets reassigned to the field. He watches Steve's back. Things have reached a level of normal that had seemed completely impossible before.

And, yeah, Bucky even allows himself to be happy.

It is then that he finds something he enjoys that Steve absolutely does not approve of.

Killing H.Y.D.R.A. agents.

It is not that Bucky is starting a rampage through old facilities or something of the like. (it wasn’t how he used his spare time before he gave himself up to S.H.I.E.L.D. either)

It is more about the occasional familiar face in the crowd - or rather the familiar face in some abandoned dungeon. This is what turns a head shot into something just a bit nastier. Using close hand combat, knifes, electrocution… Bucky finds that he is remarkably creative if he is given the chance.

Or maybe he is only putting some of his memories to use.

What ever.

He does feel better afterward.

It is worth Steve's silence.

It is worth the sideway glances.

It is worth the hushed conversations behind his back.

It is worth the entirely too knowing look in Nats face.

And then there is the one enemy who tries, in front of the entire team, to tap back into Bucky's programming. Because there was an order for hand-over-your-weapon.

And Bucky indulges him. The man should have known. The man should have known that an intact programming would have meant that he received the weapon handle first. He doesn’t. Instead Bucky places it messily in the other mans palm, no immediate grip possible. But now Buck was close enough to draw a knife. And close enough to play organ-bingo on someone who really should have known better.

The other one never had a real chance.

And when James takes back his weapon he doesn’t turn to look at the others.

Because he knows, he just knows, that there will be another familiar face just around the corner.

One that doesn’t fare that much better.

It’s messy and gory and bloody… and obviously painful for the receiving end of this treatment… but it is still effective.

And Bucky makes the conscious decision that he is willing to face hell over it.

He faces Steve's disappointment head on. His own spine is straight and his own face is set.

It isn’t the first time this has happened.

And didn’t someone once tell him that not doing as you are told is one of the surest signs of a free will?

Which is the name Bucky puts to this. Because even Steve doesn’t always need to be the wiser. His Captain probably understands anyway...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, probably could have used a bit more polishing. I am not entirely happy with the last line. But well: what's done is done, right? ;)

**Author's Note:**

> And... yes, I do know some of you.  
> If you thought the title would imply something else... how about you write that one yourself? ;)


End file.
